About the Artist

Jan Steen (c. 1625 Leiden-1679 Leiden) supposedly studied with Nicolaes Knupfer in Utrecht, with Adriaen van Ostade in Haarlem and with Jan van Goyen in the Hague. In 1649 he became a member of the St. Luke's Guild in Leiden. In the same year he married Margaretha van Goyen, the daughter of his teacher, in the Hague, probably remaining in the city until 1654. Afterward he is known to have taken over breweries in Daft and in Leiden. In 1656 he moved to Warmond near Leiden, and from 1661 to 1670 he lived in Haarlem. He spent the last years of his life in Leiden, where he remarried in 1673. Jan Steen is considered one of the most important Dutch painters of the 17th century. His extensive and varied oeuvre includes narrative and allegorical works and a few landscapes and portraits, but he concentrated on genre paintings. Among the artist's works are The Chicken Yard, 1660, Mauritshuis, The Hague; The World Upside Down, 1663, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; and Rhetorician at the Window, c. 1665, Philadelphia Museum of Art Philadelphia.